


impact

by andnowforyaya



Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Discrimination, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Imbalance, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:46:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junhong joins Daehyun at The Facility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. daehyun

**Author's Note:**

> IMPACT noun \ˈim-ˌpakt\  
> : the act or force of one thing hitting another  
> : a powerful or major influence or effect

Daehyun doesn’t really think about home anymore; it’s an idea he keeps locked in a safe corner of his mind that he takes out on the really bad nights. The more he takes it out, the more worn it gets, so he tries not to do it often.

Besides, he’s aware of how his idea of home isn’t really home at all, but a series of fantasies he’s dreamed up for himself in this godforsaken place. He lived by the sea, before -- that’s a fact. He remembers the ocean and how beautiful it was, endless and impossibly blue. He remembers his house, his older brother, his mother and father, though their faces are fuzzy, now. Sometimes, the facility lets him watch TV with the other kids, so when he dreams, his family is made up of the actors and actresses he sees on screen, and they are perfect. They are kind and loving and thoughtful.

He goes down to the beach with his TV family and he’s five, and small, and they are huge. His brother and father swing him between their arms and he laughs like a maniac, even when they threaten to drop him. “Don't let me fall!” he squeals, giggling. They don’t.

They play all day. They go back home tired and grimy from all the sand but happy, and then they wash up and have dinner.

Home feels nice, he thinks. That’s what home should feel like anyway.

There’s a memory underneath that, faded like his family’s faces. He’s seven and he can’t breathe, and his lungs are filling up with water -- odd, because they feel like they are on fire -- and his mother is screeching, “Don’t tell us what to do! Don’t tell us what to do! Shut up! Don't speak anymore, _don't speak anymore_.”

The Facility doesn’t like it when he speaks, either. They don’t bother with a mask during the day now, because Daehyun has learned the price of using his voice, and he’s got the tag around his wrist that all the other kids in The Facility also wear that mark them government property, but before lights out he goes into the Warden’s office for her to put the mask back on him.

It’s a precaution, since there are fewer eyes at night.

“You’ve been a good boy today, haven’t you, Daehyunnie?” the Warden says. She’s got a rasp in her voice from chain-smoking, yellowed fingernails and teeth. Her pretty, pointed face is all shadows and hollows, skin stretched tight over her skull. There are pictures of her in her office from a different time when she’s smiling and young and wearing skirts that flounce around her knees. Sometimes Daehyun wonders about her. If maybe she got into the business for a good reason but just got all twisted up and bent crooked because that’s how the government works.

There are moments where it seems like she cares, but these moments are far outweighed by the times she definitely does not.

Daehyun nods. Once they figured out what he could do they scared the voice right out of him. One peep and the tag around his wrist sparked electricity through his veins, freezing his limbs for a terrifying moment before the invisible hand around his throat let him go, and he was left with the painful aftershocks.

Shock collars. That’s what the tags are. Like they are all animals that need to be trained. When he’d first arrived at the facility he’d felt like a dog, a mutie mutt who’d dirtied the carpet and needed to be disciplined. The other kids stayed their distance and watched him drown, over and over again. They all needed to be disciplined, here. If they weren’t there by a judge’s ruling, then they were there simply because they were mutants.

The Warden had a special mask waiting for him and put it on him that first night like a cruel coronation ceremony, stroking his face and cooing like he was a treasured pet.

The metal slides over his skin, cool and solid, as one of the guards places the now-familiar mask over the bottom half of his face. He bites down on the flat piece that protrudes from the mask, and tries to ignore his first reflex to gag. A latch clicks and the mask tightens around his jaw, gripping his cheeks, as the guard fastens it behind him, securely locked with the Warden’s fingerprint.

“That’s right,” she says, sickly sweet. “You’re a good boy, now. Took a while, but you came around in the end.” She runs her fingers through his hair, and Daehyun stares straight ahead at the door. “Sweet dreams, child.”

A guard walks him back to his room. When he gets back, there’s a new kid sitting on the bed opposite his.

“New roommate,” the guard mutters. “Daehyun, Junhong. Why don’t you introduce yourselves.” He chuckles at his own joke, giving Daehyun a neat push into the room.

The kid stands. Despite his height, he’s got a baby face -- smooth, round cheeks and blinking eyes and a cute nose. Daehyun eyes him warily and sits down on his own bed, staring.

“I was running away,” the kid says nervously. “I was going to make it, but the police got me. I _thought_ I was going to make it. To be honest, I don’t know where I would have gone, anyway. The judge said this place is good. He said I would be okay here. I’m Junhong, by the way. And you -- can’t talk, huh?”

Daehyun grunts, swinging himself back onto his bed to lie down on top of the covers. He wonders how long this roommate will last.

“The RA who brought me up -- or whatever you’re supposed to call them, the guard -- he said you’d hate me on sight, but I don’t think so. We muties got to stick together, right? Look out for each other a bit, right?”

Daehyun rolls over onto his side, uninterested. He hears the other kid sigh, and the bed squeaks and the covers rustle.

“Well, anyway. I suppose you’re tired. I’ll let you rest. Maybe we can talk -- or whatever -- tomorrow.”

He hears him sigh again, probably for his insensitive slip-up, but Daehyun closes his eyes. He’s been at the facility a long time. His roommates have come and gone, but he’s a constant.

Kids like Junhong always change.

.

In the morning he wakes before anyone else to be escorted to the Warden's office so she can remove the mask. It doesn't make much of a difference really, but at least this way he can eat.

Breakfast is a silent affair. Daehyun sits at one of the tables in the corner with a piece of toast spread with a thin layer of strawberry jam and massages the life back into his jaw with his fingers, pressing into the hinges as the morning bell sounds and the other kids start to file in, lining up at the food bar and taking their trays to the tables scattered about the cafeteria. Few people choose to sit at the table with the kid who never talks, so Daehyun is surprised when he hears the clatter of a tray in front of him.

He looks up from his sad piece of toast and Junhong is glancing at him, then at his own breakfast -- a bowl of rice and a plate with a few sheets of crisp seaweed -- and then back at Daehyun.

Junhong beams a grin at him. His teeth are straight and pearly. Daehyun scowls.

“Daehyun-sshi -- do you mind if I call you hyung? -- I was worried when I woke up and you weren’t there,” Junhong says, too cheerful, still smiling. “I thought I missed the bell or something, but then I heard it. You got up awfully early, didn’t you?”

The toast crunches when Daehyun bites into it, chewing deliberately, even though it aches his jaw.

“Did you sleep well?” Junhong continues, persistent. “I didn’t. I mean, the bed is softer than a lot of the places I’ve been in, but it’s still a new place, you know? Seems good.”

Daehyun thinks back on his first day here. How scared he’d been. They promised to teach him how to control his mutation, but all they did was try to silence him. He’d been unteachable. It had been an accident, that first _push_ , a squeaky order coming out of a seven year old boy who was terrified and alone, telling one of the guards to _please let me go home_.

“I want hyung!” he’d screamed. “Take me back to hyung!”

He’d screamed it even though he had waved good-bye to his older brother from the backseat of a sedan, watching as their house grew smaller and smaller. He’d imagined his brother waving at the window, still, until he was out of sight. But his brother probably hadn’t cared, really. As soon as Daehyun had been chucked into the government-issued car his brother had probably gone back to his video games, thinking, _good grief_.

The guard had gotten halfway to the car, dragging Daehyun along with him to drive back to his home by the sea when the Warden had come out, wearing earplugs. She picked him right up and hauled him back inside, leaving the confused guard on the pavement. She’d put the hard metal tag around his wrist and he’d shrieked, because he was still pleading, “Take me back home, take me back home,” not understanding that his  _push_ was what was activating the tag system.

Junhong blinks at him. Daehyun notices that his blinks seem slower than most people’s, and his eyes stay shut for just a tiny moment longer. “Hyung?”

Daehyun licks his finger where some jam has collected, swallowing the last of his toast.

“It’s not a good place,” he whispers. “The judge lied to you.”

.

Junhong sticks to him like glue -- in their room, during rec hour, at meals. He doesn’t push him away because it’s kind of nice having someone there. He sits next to him during classes, too. School at the facility is a joke, but mandatory. It’s not like anyone actually cares about their education. The teacher drones on and on with two guards sitting in the back of the room at all times and Junhong tries to get him to work on math equations together because he still thinks it will matter at some point in their lives.

“Is this what you got?” Junhong asks him, showing him his answer.

Daehyun scans it over briefly and nods. “Yes.”

“You didn’t even do it,” Junhong accuses with a knowing glint in his eye.

Sighing, Daehyun obliges him and works through the problem quickly, outlining his steps. “See? Yes.”

“You’re fast,” Junhong says.

Daehyun shrugs. “I’ve sat through this lesson before.”

“How long have you been here?” Junhong asks innocently, which is when conversation usually breaks down. He’s starting to get it, Daehyun can tell. It’s been a little over a week, now, and this time after he asks, Junhong swallows, like he’s trying to take back his words. “I mean -- you don’t have to answer, obviously.”

“I was a kid,” Daehyun says softly. “When I came here.”

Junhong pokes him in the ribs with his pencil. “You’re still a kid, hyung.”

“Older than _you_ ,” Daehyun retorts.

“Right,” Junhong says. “I keep forgetting, since you’re so small.”

He smiles to make sure Daehyun knows he’s teasing. Daehyun returns it, even though the smile feels foreign on his face.

It’s nice, he thinks, to have someone to talk to again.

.


	2. daehyun

“Let’s see...177 centimeters -- Are you slouching? Stand up straight, you.”

Daehyun rolls his shoulders back and imagines the arches of his feet becoming larger underneath him. He stares straight ahead as the cold from the tiles he’s standing on seeps into his skin, and he manages to suppress a shiver that gets lodged in his chest. He’s wearing zipties around his wrists, the tag, and a mouthpiece between his teeth he’s not allowed to touch. One wrong move and the guards are one him. He learned that the hard way.

Clinical hour is a private session once a month with the Facility’s licensed physician and psychiatrist, when a couple of guards and the staff watch you take a frigid shower (probably so you don’t drown yourself) and dry off to be weighed and measured and to have your blood drawn. The blood gets put into little sealed vials, labelled and organized and carted away at the end of the day. The physician pronounces you healthy, and then you get dressed and sit for a stilting half-hour with the psychiatrist in her bare, dark office. Sometimes she gives you pills. Most of the time, she makes you scratch your deepest, most hated memories out from your eyes so you can’t even see the blood underneath your fingernails.

“178,” the physician says. “63kg. You’ve been gaining weight, kid.”

Daehyun steps off the scale when he’s given permission to. A guard hustles forward to yank his arm straight and out to the side, but Daehyun doesn’t resist. The physician presses a long needle into a vein at the crook of his elbow, and suctions blood into the tube. It could be easy, Daehyun thinks, to bear the pain of the shock from his tag to order the physician to stab himself in the eye, but the guard would bring him down in less than a moment. He’s entertained myriad fantasies right here in this very room, knowing that they were all just fantasies.

“Good to go,” the physician pronounces, taking the needle out quickly, making Daehyun suck in air between his teeth. Blood wells up in a little bead, and the doctor covers it up with a small bandaid. “How’s that knee treating you?”

Daehyun stares at the physician, then turns to look at the guard still holding onto his arm. His mouthpiece collects saliva.

“He’s walking fine,” the guard grunts, but the physician has already turned away, waiting for his next patient.

.

When he was younger, the Facility seemed like such a huge building, so different from home, and in every corner lurked something evil. He repeated the layout to himself like a mantra so he wouldn’t get lost and wind up in the belly of a dragon. First floor, offices; second floor, food; third floor, classrooms; fourth floor, gym; fifth through ninth, dorms. The roof and the backyard were for rec. There was a high, electrified fence all around both. The elevator had buttons for two basements, a tenth, eleventh, and twelfth floor but no children went to those floors that Daehyun knew of. To him, the Warden was a witch and the guards her little indentured demons.

As Daehyun grew older he came to learn about the place, about its secrets.

Mostly, the blind spots for the security cameras. The roof is equipped with only one camera, so as long as you dodge the lens or stand under it, you can’t be detected. Someone disabled the camera in the boys’ restroom on the sixth floor and no one has gotten around to fixing it. There is one blind spot in the corner of the third floor stairwell and another in the fifth, where sometimes Daehyun goes just to sit and stare out of the small, barred window looking out into the distance. The Facility is surrounded by forest on all sides, so it’s also not much to look at.

Daehyun steps into the elevator and holds his tag up to the scanner below the panel of buttons for the floors. The scanner reads him with a beep and accepts it when he pushes the button for the roof. Some kids aren’t allowed up there. The flight risks and the jumpers. Their tags don’t scan for any floor above the eighth.

The elevator doors close, and his stomach wooshes as he is carried up to the roof. He has to scan his tag again at the door of the roof to actually get out there, and when he does, he stays with his back pressed to the wall adjacent the door, under the camera, and sinks down to sit.

This late in the day, there aren’t too many kids up here, with the sun painting the sky orange and pink and purple. The lights on the fence haven’t kicked in yet, so everything seems golden and muted and quiet. Across the roof, a small group of teenagers are playing a game of basketball, and near that group sits another, chatting. Daehyun draws his knees up to his chest and reaches a hand into the chest pocket of his gray jumpsuit, pulling out a soft, worn picture that is more crease than color.

He’d torn it out of a magazine when no one was looking. It was some ad for a vacation at the beach, but he’d seen it and felt something twist his heart into his lungs. He stares at the picture with its frayed, white edges and traces the line of the sand meeting water, the coast, the grey froth there, and wonders how you can miss something you don’t even remember.

.

“Shh! Shut up, I hear someone.”

Footsteps and more shuffling. A protest that is cut short. Daehyun rounds the landing on the steps on his way down from the roof and comes face to face with Jiho and Kyung, two older boys who always have their heads bent together in conspiracy during meals and lessons. He scowls, and Junhong looks at Daehyun with wide eyes between them.

“It’s just the mute,” Jiho says, loosening his grip on Junhong.

“Hyung.”

“Go away,” Kyung says with a nasty little smile on his face. “The newest inmate needs to pass a few tests.”

“ _Hyung,_ ” Junhong says again. Junhong is easily taller than either of them, with wider shoulders and longer legs and a farther reach, but his body seems stiff as a board, frozen.

“What are you going to make him do?” Daehyun asks carefully.

“He talks!” Jiho says.

“None of your business,” Kyung says.

Daehyun presses himself up like he’s being measured on the physician’s scale again and leans in close to hiss, “I could _make_ you tell me.”

“No you can’t,” Jiho is quick to point out. “None of us can use our powers.”

“I’ve been here longer than both of you. Maybe I’ve figured a few things out.”

An uneasy silence passes between Jiho and Kyung as they look at each other, considering Daehyun’s threat. Junhong seems to thrum between them, nervous and too young.

Finally, Jiho lets him go, and Kyung does the same. “Whatever,” Kyung says. “It’s not worth it.”

They walk away. The next level up, a door slams.

Junhong whispers, “Thanks, hyung,” though it seems to echo in the stairwell.

Daehyun stalks back down the stairs to the fifth level where their dorm room is. “That was dumb,” he says over his shoulder. “What did they want you to do, anyway?”

Junhong follows him, timid in his steps. “They wanted me to bring something back up from the basement.”

“The basement’s off-limits,” Daehyun says automatically.

“That’s why it would be a _test_.”

Before they can exit the stairwell, Daehyun stops in front of the door, blocking Junhong’s way. His friend seems shaken but otherwise unharmed. Blood rushes up to his ears when he thinks about Jiho and Kyung telling others about what happened, about what he implied. It was all a lie, of course, but in the moment he hadn’t thought about how big of one it could be.

“If anyone asks you about what I said,” he begins, unable to finish. The words get stuck in his throat. _Deny it,_ he wants to say, but his vocal chords seize up upon the memory of the painful shock that would almost immediate follow.

“You didn’t say anything,” Junhong says, catching on quickly with glittering eyes. It seems he enjoys a bit of mischief. “Those two are always trying to stir something up, you know? Can’t believe anything they say.”

Daehyun exhales, nodding, and finds he is smiling when he pushes open the door.

.


	3. daehyun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry in advance. please note the 'torture' tag was added for this part.

“What would you have done,” Daehyun asks when they’re back in their room, “if I hadn’t stopped them?”

Junhong shrugs and the door closes behind him, sliding and locking into place with a beep. “I probably would have just done it,” Junhong says. “I don’t know -- they seem like you don’t want to get on their bad side.”

“The Warden’s bad side isn’t so great either,” Daehyun mumbles. He sits on his bed. Junhong lays down on his own, one hand behind his head and the other reaching up into the air for seemingly nothing. He closes his hand into a fist. The tag on his wrist slides up his arm until the swell of his forearm stops it.

“They wouldn’t have caught me,” Junhong says impishly. “I can teleport.” He turns onto his side to give Daehyun a sheepish grin. “I mean, the judge told me not to...He said my sentence here would be longer if I used my powers because that falls under the whole “not cooperating” part of the rules. So I haven’t, because this thing tracks it, doesn’t it?” He gives his wrist a shake, indicating his tag.

Daehyun stares, and then he frowns. “It doesn’t just track it, you know. It inhibits it.”

Junhong’s eyes widen, and he brings his wrist up closer to his face to inspect the little band around it. “What do you mean?”

Daehyun looks at his own tag. It’s still just as gleaming silver as the day it was put on him, but a little tighter than it was all those years ago. The only thing visible on the surface is a serial code that the scanners read, but he knows that inside lies an intricate, effective machine. “I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone,” Daehyun tells him softly, “but if I say a _push_ , I get shocked.”

The younger boy jolts as if shocked himself, eyes meeting Daehyun’s. “Are you -- you’re not joking?”

Solemnly, Daehyun shakes his head. “It’s rigged so that whenever a mutant uses their powers, it activates. It keeps us in check. So there isn’t chaos.”

“That sounds like propaganda bullshit,” Junhong says angrily, and then seems to draw himself into a tight little ball. “Sorry. I cursed.”

“It’s okay,” Daehyun says. “It is.”

Junhong doesn’t say anything, but he winds the tag around his wrist, over and over again, looking at it from every angle he can, scowling. “I almost want to try--”

 _Don’t,_ Daehyun wants to say, but he swallows that command and says instead, “I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Does it -- does it really, really hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Why hasn’t anyone -- has anyone ever taken it off?”

“Not successfully.”

Junhong swallows, and Daehyun knows he wants to ask about that, but then the door beeps and slides open with a whoosh, and when Daehyun looks out their barred window, he sees that the sun has set and that the sky is a canvas of red and purple and blue.

“Let’s go,” the guard orders, jerking his head in Daehyun’s direction.

Daehyun doesn’t fight him when he wraps a hand around his bicep in a hard grip, sure to leave bruises. He goes with him to see the Warden, and hopes Junhong will be able to wait for his answers in the morning.

.

When the guard leads him into the elevator and presses the button for the lower basement and not for the first floor where the Warden’s office is located, Daehyun’s skin prickles all over, and he finds himself looking at the guard’s cool, impassive face as they pass through the floors. The Facility relies heavily on routine, and now that there has been a break in it, Daehyun doesn’t know what to expect.

The uncertainty nearly brings him to his knees as his stomach floats up to his throat and back, quick and sudden, and nausea roils through him.

“Relax,” the guard says, annoyed, gripping Daehyun’s arm harder. Daehyun hisses. “Just do as you’re told.”

It does nothing to calm him. The elevator screeches to a stop and Daehyun shudders.

The guard manhandles him through the doors and down the dimly-lit hallway. Down here, he thinks at first the floors and walls and ceilings are made of concrete, but there’s a strange iridescent quality to them that makes him think not. Whatever it is, it makes him feel a bit sick.

They pass more doors on either side of them, each door fitted with a rectangle of black glass, and Daehyun’s heart starts to pound erratically in his chest, his breath coming in fast. “Where are you taking me?” he asks, voice strangled.

“The Warden wants to see you,” the guard says.

“But we usually just go to her office, we usually just--” Daehyun screams when suddenly the guard has him pressed against the wall, arms wrenched and twisted painfully behind him. He breathes through clenched teeth, trying to suppress his initial reflex to struggle. He knows it will only be more painful for him if he does.

“What’s gotten you so mouthy?” the guard sneers, hot breath close to his ear. “We’ll have none of that when the Warden sees you. Understand?”

Daehyun nods, mute.

The guard growls and twists his arm up higher, putting strain on his shoulder until it feels like it’s going to snap. Daehyun cries out.

“Understand?” the guard asks again.

“Yes,” Daehyun whimpers.

He releases him, and simultaneously, the door closest to them slides open, and he is pushed inside.

“Daehyunnie,” the Warden croons. Daehyun blinks against the harsh, bright light of the room. A metal table that is drilled down to the floor stands between them, with chairs on each side. The guard pushes him forward, and Daehyun stumbles into a seat. “Have you been crying again, sweet boy?”

The Warden reaches over and drags her finger underneath Daehyun’s eyes, wiping away at the moisture there.

“Hands on the table,” the guard says. Daehyun puts his hands on the table.

“We won’t cuff you if you cooperate,” the Warden promises. “Will you cooperate?”

Daehyun looks down at his hands, back to the Warden, to the guard by the door. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears. “Yes,” he says in a small voice.

The Warden motions at a door Daehyun hadn’t noticed opposite where he entered, and then she takes the seat adjacent to him. “You see,” she begins in a sickly sweet voice, “We need your help. We’ve been working with the police on this one. One of your kind, another mutant, has been tracking down people who are sympathetic to the Separatist cause, and murdering them in cold blood. We don’t want any more people to be hurt, you see?”

A man is dragged in from the door by two other guards and unceremoniously dumped into the seat opposite Daehyun. His head lolls about his shoulders. He’s cuffed with his arms behind the back of the chair, and filthy. He stinks of blood and sweat and vomit, and Daehyun can’t look at him, can’t look at the way the left side of his face is swollen and discolored, the ring of bruises around his neck. The nausea he felt from earlier returns, more vengeful than before.

“We think this man is one of the murderer’s associates,” the Warden explains, sitting back comfortably and crossing her legs. “We’ve tried _a lot_ of ways to get him to tell us where his friend is, but he’s very loyal. At least he’s got that going for him.”

The man gurgles. He lurches to the side and spits out blood before groaning and rolling back into the seat. Daehyun stares at the splatter of red on the otherwise immaculate tiled floor.

“No,” he whispers, realizing what they want him to do.

“No?” the Warden repeats, incredulous. “What do you mean, no? You don’t have a choice in this.”

Daehyun presses his lips together into a tight line, and the Warden stands, her chair scraping back. Pain flares at his temple when she strikes him, snapping his head to the side with the force of it. He nearly falls out of his chair.

“Ask him where the murderer is,” she says. “ _Push_ him. Things will get better for you if you agree. If you don’t, well.”

She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to. Daehyun’s ears are still ringing from her attack.

“What will happen to him?” Daehyun manages.

“If the information he gives us is useful,” the Warden says, “he will be released into police custody and dealt with fairly.”

She’s lying. Everything she’s ever told him was a lie. The man wheezes in his chair for breath. He’s practically dead already.

He looks up at her and glares, and her mouth falls open at the open display of defiance. Daehyun draws a deep breath, and then he says, “Let me--”

The guard has him out of the chair and on the ground before he can finish the _push_ , helped along by the shock of his tag, and then the guard does something to Daehyun’s tag that makes it continue to activate, even though he isn’t saying anything. His skin feels like it’s on fire, like his bones are coming apart. He’s not sure if he’s screaming.

He hears the Warden say, “Get rid of him; he wasn’t going to be of any use anyway.”

There’s a sick snap of bones and then the thump of a body hitting the ground, and Daehyun doesn’t open his eyes, terrified of what he might see. He hears the heavy slide of boots against tiles as the guards drag the other man away, and the Warden says next, “This was a failure. He wasn’t ready, like we hoped. Put him in the Box.”

If his tag has stopped, he isn’t aware of it. He feels his body being moved like a puppet on strings, and grits his teeth against the pain lancing through his muscles. He stops moving an eon later, only to be shoved into a cell, barely over an arms’ width across, with no windows and a ceiling he would be able to reach with his fingertips if he stood. There’s a thin blanket in one corner and a toilet in the other, a slot in the door that doesn’t open from his side.

Daehyun’s entire frame shakes when he crawls over to the blanket, reaching out and slowly pulling it over himself, finding little comfort in the shallow warmth it provides. The Warden called this the Box.

Daehyun looks at the four walls, brings the blanket up to cover his face, and lets himself cry.

.


	4. junhong

The guard takes Daehyun away that night and Daehyun doesn't return for a week. When Junhong asks one of the guards where his roommate is, he is met with silence, indifference, or vague answers. "He's on a project," one of them says. "Very special."

Somehow, Junhong doesn't believe him. He starts to pay attention to the way the Facility is run. The judge told him it was going to be like a rehabilitation center. Maybe Junhong would make some friends, form some bonds that would help him stay in one place for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Stay out of trouble. Junhong had grown up in the mutant foster care system, but he'd spent more time being shuffled around in it than actually staying with any of the families.

Sometimes, he thinks it's just in his nature; he's a teleporter, after all. He's jumpy.

But the Facility is more like a prison than anything else. The kids all wear the same grey jumpsuits. They walk in lines everywhere. The guards are in sight at all times except for when you are locked away in your room, and they parade around with their comms. When Junhong looks a little more closely, he sees they are also carrying night sticks. The tags are shackles.

He spends the week fretting over his hyung and where he could be, losing focus in class and getting his knuckles rapped for it.

He dreams up scenarios that become more and more fantastical as the week draws to a close. Maybe Daehyun really is on a special project. Maybe the Facility isn't as bad as either of them thought. Maybe he's spending time with his family -- he's been here for so long, surely he deserves to see them every once in a while? Maybe he's run away and making his way to the city. Maybe he'll come back for Junhong.

He's lying in bed and his mind is racing when the door beeps and hisses, sliding open.

Daehyun steps through, and Junhong sits up in bed with a jump.

"Hyung!"

Daehyun does not look at him. His head is bowed, and he is wearing the mask the Warden makes him wear at night when they are all asleep. The jumpsuit seems to swallow him up, and his shoulders are tense and high, near his ears. He hugs himself around the middle and stares at the floor.

“Get to bed,” the guard who was accompanying him barks, and Junhong watches Daehyun twitch at the command. He takes a slow step forward, and the door snaps shut. Daehyun freezes, watching it.

“Hyung?” Junhong asks this time, uncertain. All the scenarios he’d dreamed up over the past week race through his mind again, but none of them fit the boy presented before him now, small and thin and quick, precise movements.

Daehyun finally looks at him, like he is just noticing Junhong for the first time since entering. Junhong almost looks away, unable to take in Daehyun’s near-feral stare.

“It’s me,” Junhong says instead. “It’s Junhong.”

Daehyun says nothing; he can’t anyway, with the mask on, but he is standing so still it looks as though he isn’t breathing. There are grey smudges underneath his eyes and what looks like a bruise forming or fading over his right cheek. His dark hair is crushed flat on one side and curled into multiple cowlicks on the other.

He takes another step, closes his eyes, and opens them again, flinching when he sees Junhong hasn’t disappeared or moved.

“What did they do to you,” Junhong whispers, his chest growing heavy, but there is anger, too, and it makes him clench his hands into fists.

Daehyun makes a noise like a whimper, holding himself even tighter, looking at the space by Junhong on his bed with dark, pleading eyes. He takes another step.

“Of course,” Junhong says. He scoots back and folds down the covers. “Come here.”

Daehyun doesn’t seem to want to get in at first. He keeps looking at Junhong and then at the space and teetering like he’s at the edge of a cliff, but finally Junhong reaches out and touches him on the wrist, and it makes him crumple. Junhong lets Daehyun pull his arm to rest around his waist, to hold him, to anchor him, whatever it is he needs.

He says, “I’m sorry,” but Daehyun shakes his head.

He’s not sure if he sleeps.

.

They don’t talk about their new sleeping arrangement. In fact, Daehyun seems to be refusing to speak at all. He no longer joins them for classes, but disappears with a guard escort for half the day and returns a little bit before dinner is usually served. Junhong wonders if his silence is self-imposed or something else.

While Daehyun is away, Junhong watches. He has always been good at being on the periphery, under the radar. He only got caught and brought before a judge because he’d been hungry, and here, at least there is food.

He feels like he is watching a movie with its volume turned very low. Everything is muted, hushed, and dealt under shadow. Guards increase in number. Kids talk about their powers only behind closed doors and in small groups. Once, during lunch, Junhong watches a guard stroll up to a trio and lead one of them away, without a word. Where do they go?

The walls are grey, the uniform is grey; their world is grey, like a heavy fog has drifted into the Facility. The Warden tightens up curfew and restricts roof access. Speaking out of turn in class gets you removed from class, and you don’t return until the next day.

Junhong has forty-five minutes allotted in the rec room on the fifth floor before curfew, and he sits on the lumpy couch and stares at the old television, nearly a relic, a small flatscreen mounted on the wall. The kid in the seat next to him snaps his fingers, and the television changes channels with each snap, until he settles on the local news. The picture is distorted and grainy, like there is a jammer in the mix.

“--mutant at large has already attacked three government workers. There have been no casualties yet, but he is considered volatile and dangerous. Civilians are advised immediately to seek shelter and dial the authorities if they come across him. His power seems to be some sort of control over explosive material.” The news anchorwoman pauses, drawing a breath. “Interesting to note, the government workers he attacked have all gone back on their Separatist stances. Is this a coincidence, or something else?”

Junhong scoffs. Well, when she frames it like that, of course it will seem like this mutant -- whoever he is -- has an agenda. The story shifts, and Junhong sits up higher in the cushions like he is straining to hear. The video footage of a young woman with a heart-shaped face and large, cat-like eyes standing behind a podium begins to play.

“--This isn’t a revolutionary idea. _Mutant_ does not mean dangerous. Our school is a safe space where all children can learn, together. We will not separate, nor discriminate.” The woman gestures behind her, where the front gates of a seemingly large, green property are open. In the background, Junhong can see a building that looks like a mansion. Vines twist up and around the iron rods in the gate, and reporters in the small audience begin to vie for the woman’s attention.

“Miss Park,” one reporter begins, “ _Mutant_ might not mean dangerous, but how will you account for the ones who are? For example, the one attacking government workers right now. Isn’t it better to keep them separated from the general population?”

“You are talking about _children_ \--”

The television shuts off. Junhong startles, and so does the kid next to him. A guard in the room growls, “Curfew,” but the sun has barely set yet. It’s too early for curfew.

Still, Junhong goes, picturing the school in his mind and keeping its name on his tongue. _The Park Day and Boarding School._ What would a place like that be like?

Daehyun looks up from his bed when he enters, mask in place. Junhong sighs. He’s starting to think he’ll never hear Daehyun speak again.

“How long have you been back?” Junhong asks.

Daehyun shrugs.

“I wish you would have come to find me. We could have hung out.”

Daehyun draws his knees up to his chest, tapping his pen against his notebook.

“I got to watch the news, though. Usually the channel doesn’t come through...But it was interesting. Did you know there’s a school for kids like us?” Junhong flops into his bed, drawing the covers up and around himself. “Can you believe it? For regular kids and mutie kids. A place like that really exists!”

Daehyun scribbles something into his notebook. Their beds are close enough together that he only has to reach out and Junhong can take it from him. _Not for kids like us_ , he’s written.

Junhong hands the notebook back to him, frowning. “You’re probably right. We might be too old, anyway.”

A beat of silence.

“Hey, did you know there’s also a mutant out there who’s, like, going crazy and attacking people? Well, government workers, apparently. But he hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

Daehyun doesn’t make any noise to acknowledge that he heard. When Junhong glances over, he’s staring at his notebook, the grip around his pen tight. He scribbles something and hands it to Junhong.

_No casualties?_

“Nope,” Junhong says, passing his notebook back.

Daehyun is quick with a reply, nearly throwing his notebook at Junhong in response.

_They told me he was a MURDERER._

Daehyun closes his eyes, and then he covers his ears with his hands, curling up into a ball, and Junhong rolls over to be closer.

“Hyung? Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Daehyun won’t tell him anything -- _anything_ \-- about what happened during that week he was gone, and Junhong fears it was something horrible.

The door beeps and hisses open. Daehyun tenses, then brings his face up, and his expression is resigned.

“Assignment,” the guard at the door says. “C’mon.”

Junhong reaches for his hand, and their fingers brush against each other. He wants to hold on, to keep Daehyun with him, to keep him from whatever they are doing behind closed doors, but Daehyun meets his eyes and shakes his head, like he knows what Junhong is thinking.

.


	5. junhong

Junhong doesn't sleep that night, too worried about how Daehyun will return to him, if he will return at all. He gets out of bed well before the morning bell, feeling like his brain is trying to crawl out of his skull, and goes to take a shower while there is still hot water to run.

When he returns, Daehyun is in Junhong’s bed, curled tight around himself, facing the wall. The door slides shut behind Junhong and he approaches quietly, the bed creaking when he sits on the very edge. He watches Daehyun’s shoulders stiffen, his fingers digging into the fabric covering his ribs.

“Hyung?”

Daehyun doesn’t answer, but Junhong wasn’t expecting him to. He takes the towel over his shoulders and scrubs his hair with it, drying it out. Then he throws it into the hamper in one corner of their room, and stands to rummage through his sparse dresser for a clean coverall. Laundry is taken once a week but there's been a delay since the last haul. Junhong finishes dressing, and sits back down on the bed, closer this time.

“Hyung? Are you okay?”

When Daehyun speaks, his voice is thin and ragged, crackling like fire. “They killed him anyway,” he says, his voice sending chills down Junhong's spine. “I gave them what they wanted, but they killed him anyway.”

Junhong’s eyes widen at the older boy’s hollow words. “What do you mean?”

But Daehyun doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns slowly to face Junhong, and Junhong feels the hot sting of tears prickling the backs of his eyes.

“What happened to you?” Junhong whispers.

Daehyun has a spectacular bruise blooming across the right side of his face, purpling the area around his eye with dark spots of red underneath his skin where the tissue is damaged. His bottom lip is cut and puffy, and Junhong can see five dark dots like imprints at the base of his throat -- bruises left behind by fingers.

“I was bad,” Daehyun tells him.

“No.” Junhong shakes his head, unable to believe what he sees, and slowly lowers himself to the bed. He can’t muster the energy to be upright, and Daehyun closes his eyes when Junhong hovers his palm over the heat of his bruise. “No, they can’t do this.”

“They can do whatever they want,” Daehyun says.

.

Junhong doesn’t go to his morning class. He goes to the nurse on the first floor before classes even start and asks for antiseptic and bandaids and cream, and when she gives him a funny look, he tells her it’s because he likes to keep his room stocked. That way, he doesn’t have to keep coming back to the nurse for something as trivial as a bandaid, right? She gives him a small sample of items, and tells him to leave.

Junhong stays in bed with Daehyun and watches him try to sleep. He wipes the antiseptic with two gentle fingers over Daehyun’s bruise and taps cream over his cut lip so it won’t dry out and split even more. Daehyun wakes up three times before lunch, each time shaking, each time pale and muttering nonsense until Junhong meets his eyes and keeps him there. “We’re in our room,” Junhong tells him. “You’re safe here.”

“Safe,” Daehyun repeats. “Safe safe _safe_ ,” but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of a lie.

.

No one comes for Daehyun that day or the next, so Junhong stays with him, bringing back food from the cafeteria after meals to share with him. He thinks if anyone _does_ come for him, they better be ready to deal with a lanky teenager with swinging fists.

He’ll tell his teachers he hasn’t been feeling well, and decided to spare everyone from his cold -- he even went to the nurse before to try to halt the cold in its tracks. He wonders how many lies have been told about the Facility -- to the media, to the families who send their kids here, to the judicial system who sends so many mutants to its stale, cold rooms. He wonders if his judge would still have sentenced him here if he knew what was really going on behind its doors. He wonders if _anyone_ really knows what’s going on behind its doors.

Daehyun shifts in his sleep, and Junhong does his best to stay very, very still, lest he disturb him. He’s never been very good at staying still, but he’s trying.

The door beeps and slides open, and Daehyun’s hand clenches the front of Junhong’s shirt. He looks down and Daehyun’s eyes are round and scared.

“It’s okay,” Junhong whispers between them. “I’m not going to let them take you.”

The guard on the other side of the door announces, “Choi Junhong, the Warden would like to see you.”

He sits up, confused. Daehyun’s hand travels down to his thigh.

“What?”

“You heard me,” the guard says. “The Warden wants to see you.”

“What did I do?” Junhong asks, but Daehyun’s fingers dig into his thigh. He looks down at him and tries to be brave.

“They’re taking you away from me,” Daehyun says in a small, cracked voice, barely audible. His right eye is nearly swollen shut, but he’s been healing. Junhong brushes his thumb under Daehyun’s chin.

“I’ll be back,” Junhong promises.

He rises. Daehyun holds his hand until he can’t anymore, until it slides from his grip.

.

He’d only been to the Warden’s office once before, when he was first processed through the system and brought to the Facility. It’s a warm office with dark floors and comfortable furniture that belies its occupant. Junhong sees pictures on the walls of a woman in pretty dresses, the beach, the mountains, a pair of people hiking. The desk takes up most of the room, and it is piled high with organized paperwork.

The Warden sits behind it, hands folded upon her desk, crooked smile on her face.

“You can go,” she tells the guard, and Junhong’s little hairs at the back of his neck prickle when the door clicks shut behind him. He can’t help but feel like he’s been led into the lion’s den. “Please, sit.” She gestures to one of the chairs in front of her desk.

Junhong sits, palms growing clammy. He wipes them on the thighs of his coveralls and remembers Daehyun’s eyes so full of fear -- for him? Or for himself?

“How are you finding your time here, Junhong-sshi?” the Warden asks him in a sweet voice.

Junhong’s throat goes dry, but he manages to answer. “It’s not what I thought it would be.”

“Oh? How so?” The Warden’s eyes brighten. She seems genuinely curious in his answer.

Junhong swallows. “I can’t say, exactly,” he hedges. “I guess I thought it would be like summer camp all the time. That’s what the judge made it seem like.”

“We don’t have the resources for that,” the Warden says, smile dropping. She continues, “I see you’ve been making friends, here.”

Junhong shrugs, playing at nonchalance. “Sort of.”

“Friends are important, Junhong-sshi. Associating with good people can make you a better person, yourself. But associating with bad people? Well, you’ve made yourself more likely to travel down a bad path, too.”

“I guess…”

“Why’d you skip your classes?” the Warden chirps suddenly, the question registering more loudly than all the others.

“I wasn’t feeling well,” Junhong replies readily. “I thought I might be contagious.”

“And so you thought to spare everyone else of your -- cold?”

“Yeah.”

The Warden sits back in her seat, raising herself higher by straightening her back and shoulders. She smirks, and a shiver runs down Junhong’s back. “You’re a good boy, thinking of others like that,” she says.

“I guess--”

“You’re a good boy, but Daehyun-sshi’s a bad one. He’s been acting up lately. I’m sorry you’re stuck together. Maybe we should look into switching you out?”

“No!” Junhong denies a little too quickly. His breath hitches when the Warden raises a single, elegant eyebrow at him. “No, I mean -- he’s a good roommate, and -- he’s trying? To get better?” He stutters over his sentence, trying to speak the way he thinks the Warden wants him to speak, his heart bursting in his chest at the thought of being separated from Daehyun now.

She lets silence fill up the room. Junhong squirms in his seat, wiping his palms still against his thighs.

“You’re friends,” the Warden finally says.

“Yeah.”

“I know you are. I know everything about the Facility. I know everything that goes on in this place. I know you weren’t sick. I know you decided to stay in your room for the past two days because you wanted to stay with Daehyun-sshi, and that choice was something a bad boy would choose to do.” She takes a breath, nails clicking against the surface of her table. “You see, we want all of our children here to be good boys and girls, to do as they’re told. Sometimes when they are being bad, we have to remind them in little ways -- like with Daehyunnie. He doesn’t want to be bad anymore, and that is good. You don’t want to be bad, either, do you?”

Junhong presses his lips together into a tight line, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, anger quickly coursing through his veins. The words suddenly explode from him. “You can’t do that! I know what you did, or what you had someone else do. What you’re doing is against the law, I’m sure of it.”

Again the Warden lets silence reign while Junhong seethes.

“It’s not,” the Warden says, clipped. “There are no laws protecting the rights of mutants and mutant children. Unless you’re just referring to basic human decency, but then there are so many who would argue that you are _not human_.”

His heart races in his chest, and his vision spots. He feels his stomach drop like he’s falling from a very high place, and thinks shock has never overtaken him like this before, not ever. Junhong blinks a few times as his body and mind catch up with each other, these physiological responses all adding up to one reflex: teleporting.

Only, nothing happens. Instead of blinking and feeling that tug in his gut and opening his eyes somewhere else, fire erupts along his limbs and pulses twice, and Junhong cries out at the pain.

The aftershocks course through him, making his muscles spasm and his fingers twitch against the armrests.

“Sometimes if our children are very bad,” the Warden continues carelessly, “we have to send them away, because there’s nothing we can do for them anymore. You wouldn’t want to be sent away, would you? You wouldn’t want Daehyunnie to be sent away, would you?”

Panting, Junhong shakes his head, sweat dripping from his temples.

The Warden says, “No, of course not. The Facility is a good place for growing mutants.”

The chair creaks again, and then the Warden is standing before him, her nails against his cheeks as she tilts his face up so he can meet her eyes. She wipes her thumbs over his wet cheeks, and coos, “There, there. Just be a good boy from now on, and nothing like that will ever happen again. Will you be a good boy?”

Junhong nods, jaw clenched tight against speaking.

The Warden smiles, and her teeth are yellow. “That’s good, Junhongie. Now, drink a glass of water, go back to your room, and show up in class tomorrow.”

As the guard escorts him back to the elevator, Junhong’s eyes drift to the barred front doors of the Facility, and he imagines teleporting himself and Daehyun to somewhere very far from these walls.

.


	6. junhong

In the morning, Daehyun is no longer in the spot next to him in bed. Junhong panics for a moment, thinking the Facility has taken him away again, before realizing the other boy has just moved over to his own mattress, his back facing Junhong under the thin covers, the knobs of his spine visible over the collar of his shirt.

The sun streaks in through their window but is not warm, and a chill creeps over Junhong when suddenly he thinks back on his meeting with the Warden just a few hours ago, how she’d spoken about them, about mutants, the glassy dark look of her eyes when he’d been rendered immobile from the shock of his tag. He grits his teeth as a phantom pain lances through his bones, remembering that awful shock, and he sits up suddenly, throwing the covers from his body, feeling suffocated. Daehyun twitches.

“Sorry,” Junhong mumbles, tugging at his clothes. “Are you awake?”

Slowly, Daehyun turns in bed. His eyes are red and the skin around them puffy. The bruise has faded more, but still looks tender and dark. He pulls his covers back over his shoulders, burrowing back into them.

“Are -- are you going to class today?” Junhong asks, swallowing after like he wishes he could pull back his words. The Warden had told him not to skip again, and he wonders briefly in alarm if she had meant the message to apply to Daehyun as well.

Daehyun shrugs, the movement tiny underneath the cloth, and his eyes lose focus staring at something past Junhong. He wonders if he could feign ignorance and tell the nurse about Daehyun, then realizes the futility of such a thought. The Facility has shown, time and time again, that they simply _don’t care_. And whenever Junhong so much as mentions going to the nurse in front of him, Daehyun cowers. He just wants someone to take a proper look at Daehyun again; Junhong’s knowledge of injuries extends only to what is visible, and even then the most he can do is apply some topical cream and a bandaid.

“Will you get in trouble?”

Another shrug. _I don’t care_ , Daehyun’s eyes seem to say. Junhong throws his weight to the side and plants his feet on the floor next to the bed, still sitting, feeling the way the mattress gives under the tight grips of his fingers.

“I don’t want to leave you alone, but -- but I think I have to go.”

Daehyun wriggles until he can pull an arm out from under the blanket, reaching a hand toward Junhong, who stands to take it. The older boy’s fingers seem to be held together by hollowed-out bird bones, light and delicate and easily bruised. Daehyun squeezes his hand once, making a soft noise behind his mask, and then retreats again, adjusting the covers.

Junhong takes it all to mean: _Thanks._

.

Class is dull. Junhong can’t focus for any of it. A boy two seats in front of him hunches over his work protectively, stealing glances at the guards in the back of the room when he thinks no one is looking. Another boy keeps pulling at his collar, and Junhong suspects he sees bruising underneath the fabric there. The teacher drones on and on and when one of the boys in the front dips his head, starting to nod off, his seatmate quickly shakes him awake before the teacher can notice. What Junhong had dismissed as regular classroom behaviors now shifts in his mind. He wonders how many of his classmates are in a state of constant terror, and then he wonders how he ever saw this place as anything but a prison, holding inmates whose only offenses were that they existed.

The judge sentenced him here until he is eighteen; he’ll have to survive three years of this, and if he’s really thinking hard about it, he doesn’t think he’d survive for that long. He doesn’t think Daehyun would make it past another couple of months. They're all trapped here, by a system that doesn't care they are children, that can only see them as strange and dangerous mutants.

His grip on his pencil tightens, fingernails digging into his palms. He feels his heart start to beat hard in his chest, but he pushes down on his first reflex to think of the place he wants to be instead of where he is now. His teleportation has always been shaky when strong emotion comes into play, but now he can’t afford to be so volatile. His vision dances as he clenches his teeth, struggling to maintain his presence in the _here_ when everything about here is so miserable, when all he wants to do is get away and to bring Daehyun with him.

Desperate, he shifts his focus to his pencil, staring hard. Yellow paint covering smooth wood, a metal band to hold the eraser in place, the point which has been dulled to a blunt tip. He blinks, black covering his field of vision and head swimming, disconnecting from everything for a moment, but when he opens his eyes again, he is still in his seat, and his heart is returning to its normal, steady pace.

He exhales shakily, relieved the urge to teleport passed without incident. He reaches down for his pencil which has fallen from the table. He must have lost his grip on it just now. Rolling his shoulders back, he sinks back down into his seat, shaken but recovering. He can’t do anything like that again, if he wants to keep the Warden’s attention away from him.

Junhong feels a tap on his shoulder and turns to look back at the student, who looks at him with shining admiration in his eyes. “That was cool,” the student whispers.

Junhong scowls, then feels it fade into a frown. “What was?”

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Junhong hisses back.

The teacher clears his throat, and Junhong’s attention snaps back to the front of the classroom, an apology ready on his lips, but their teacher has already moved on.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait ;;;;


	7. daehyun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please note warnings for this chapter: dissociation, abuse, trauma, panic attacks

The bed, the uniform, the scratchy sheets. The sun slants through the shades over their lonely window of their dorm room, and Daehyun rises to close them fully, plunging the room into half-darkness, before crawling back into bed. It hurts to move, but he thinks that has little to do with his healing bruises and more to do with the phantom chains he can feel constricting around his chest, tightening with every passing breath.

Daehyun squeezes his eyes shut. Don’t speak, don’t speak, _don’t speak._  He tells himself this, because this is how things will get better. That's what the Warden said. Don't speak unless you are told. 

The bed vibrates under his ear, the heavy footfalls of a guard. Junhong went to class about an hour ago, eyes haunted but hopeful, whereas Daehyun just feels haunted.

If the guard comes for him, what will they make him do today?

He doesn’t know, and he tries not to care. If he separates himself from it, it doesn’t hurt as bad, and he doesn’t feel as guilty. He is slowly learning that he is a vessel for his power. He is not his power. Or maybe they are symbiotic. Would one die without the other? Could they extract it from him like an essence, like it is just his blood, and inject it into another vein for use? Would he die without it? They manipulate his body to harness it, to use it as they will, before shutting him away in his room again. He could leave the room. He could wander the halls, go to class, go back up to the roof. He knows he _can_ but he cannot will his body to move anymore. Everyone will stare, anyway.

Daehyun counts his own breaths, and when he reaches two hundred, he finds his mind nothing but a wall of static, thoughts wonderfully bare, and closes his eyes to see if he can trick himself into sleeping.

.

He wakes up in the basement.

The Warden smiles her sickly sweet smile and coos, “Hello, my good, good boy,” and scratches her nail under his chin. He is in a seat, and it is cold. His tag is on his wrist and both wrists are strapped to the arms of the chair. There is a man in front of him. “Ask him what he knows about Bang Yongguk,” the Warden orders.

Daehyun waits a moment too long. Pain erupts in his veins. The lights flare, and his head buzzes. He asks him when he can breathe again. The man knows nothing. They discard him, and bring in another.

.

Daehyun loses three hours. He knows this, because when he wakes in the room he shares with Junhong, the sun has started to set outside of the small square window, and the sky is the color of a dying fire. He picks at the skin around his nails, lying curled in the hard bed, and turns to face the wall. He has taken to wearing a cloth mask during the day, because it is better not to speak, and he reaches up to touch it, finding a little comfort. Speaking is bad. He only ever hurts people when he speaks.

His brain is fuzzy. He tries to remember what he had been doing for the past few hours and only grimaces against the ringing in his ears that follows his efforts. Not worth it.

He wonders where Junhong is, but can’t dwell on the thought. It makes his chest ache.

.

The door slides open, and Daehyun’s blood freezes before he can recognize the shuffle step of Juhong’s feet across the floor. He’s not sure if he had fallen asleep or if he’s just been staring listlessly at the wall for however long it’s been. Everything feels the same, and maybe it’s easier that way. The bed dips, and his body rolls with the slight slant of the mattress to meet Junhong’s hip.

“Hyung? Oh my god, Daehyun--”

Junhong’s fingers linger above his cheekbone, their searing heat making him flinch. The images of them loom in his vision, large and foreign and dangerous. Daehyun blinks rapidly, trying to make sense of them. It’s only Junhong, but his heart is racing.

“No,” he whispers underneath the mask, his voice hoarse and cracked; his throat feels like sandpaper -- when had that happened?

Junhong reaches for him again, slow, his eyes soft, but Daehyun cannot reign in the panic he feels suddenly, a mantra running through his mind: _don’t let him touch you, don’t let him touch you--_

He fights, and Junhong pulls back after Daehyun cuffs him in the face with a weak fist.

“Stop that,” Junhong says in a high, thin voice. “Stop that, you’re going to hurt yourself. Hyung, it’s _me_.”

Daehyun blinks and he is back in the basement with its black windows and shiny walls, and sheer terror binds his body into place. His head spins. Wasn’t he just in their room? Away from this. With Junhong. Gentle hands on his wrists. On his face. He opens his mouth to scream but no sound emerges past his ruined throat. He’s not really here. He can’t be. He hadn’t fallen asleep or anything. He was just with Junhong, and Junhong was just saying--

“ _I’m trying to help you_ ,” Junhong whispers desperately. “Please, hyung.”

Daehyun shuts his eyes, feeling wetness seep past the lids and slide down his cheeks. He counts his breaths, slower and slower. Junhong, when he realizes what he is doing, counts with him, aloud.

“There you go,” Junhong says next, no longer touching him, but breathing with him. Daehyun’s eyelids flutter open. He looks away from Junhong, ashamed, but the younger boy will not let him pull away. “We’re gonna get out of here,” Junhong promises. “We’ll find a way.”

Daehyun does not say anything. It is better not to speak.

.


	8. junhong

Junhong cannot watch Daehyun disappear. In his short life, there have been few things he has held dear, and many of them can be stuffed into or strapped onto a simple back pack: his skateboard, a picture of his older brother with him in front of a huge Ferris wheel, old crumpled tickets from the time his family took him to an amusement park, before things fell to shit. At night he dreams of taking Daehyun and shrinking him to the size of a doll to hide away into his back pack so that they can run.

He’s obsessed with it.

During his free time he walks the perimeter of the Facility, or at least the farthest corners he is allowed, tracing his hands over fence or stone, staring out into the dense forest north of the property. He runs into few guards and fewer security cameras than he expects, but that might not mean anything. During classes he draws what he can remember into his notebooks, the sharp corners of the Facility in his crude hand, hoping that turning it over in his memory will uncover some weakness in the border. The boy who sits behind him in class tells him more than once that his drawings need a little work, but Junhong only thanks him, and doesn’t dare even think his true intentions.

Daehyun is a specter. Even when he is in their room, he’s not really there, his mind far away, and any spark of personality he had offered when they first met has fizzled away completely, and so sometimes Junhong will pull his disappearing hyung into bed and tell him about his day, brushing his fingers over new and old bruises, holding him so that he can sleep.

“We’re getting out,” Junhong promises every night, hoping it doesn’t feel like a lie.

.

A tough night leads to a tough morning. The nightmares had been sporadic but plentiful through the dark hours, and Junhong feels like perhaps someone had bludgeoned him unconscious and told him he’d been asleep as a lie. He’d woken begrudgingly, feet dragging, and now Daehyun is standing in front of the door, blocking his way.

Daehyun grips the front of Junhong’s shirt and doesn’t blink, his gaze fixated on Junhong’s. “I have to go to class,” Junhong tells him for the tenth time, but all Daehyun does is shake his head, the metal contraption over the lower half of his face, clothes sagging off his slender frame. _Don’t go,_ his eyes plead.

“It’s just class,” Junhong says, again. “I can’t miss; the Warden will--”

At the mention of the Warden, Daehyun’s grip slackens, but he still doesn’t step to the side. Instead, he moves to grab one of Junhong’s hands, and then he holds it against his chest, squeezing lightly. If he were wearing his cloth mask, he’d be able to whisper, at least.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Junhong says gently.

Daehyun lets go. He sighs with his whole body, nodding once, but that fearful, faraway look doesn’t leave his eyes. It makes Junhong shiver as he steps into the hallway, looking back into their room to find Daehyun’s eyes like mirrors in the dark, reflective and awful.

The door slides shut like a knife cutting through bone.

.

The boy sitting next to him in class glares at Junhong’s foot tip-tapping a strange rhythm underneath his desk. Junhong glares right back. He can’t help it. He’s wired differently today, like the way a storm feels right before lightning strikes, everything fuzzy and sharp and metallic. It is probably because he didn’t sleep much, probably because Daehyun thrashed until Junhong bore down on top of him, horror and apology in every cell of his body.

“Will you _stop_?” the boy says when Junhong narrows his eyes at him. Junhong shrugs, and the little hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention when he hears Kyung snicker.

He whips his head back to throw him a glare, too, but is only met with a smirk.

The teacher’s droning rises in volume suddenly, so Junhong directs his attention back to the front of the class, hoping he wasn’t caught. The moment passes. Junhong squeezes a rubber eraser in the palm of his hand, the shape of it calming, the give of it just enough to make it feel like it can soak up his extra energy.

By the time class lets out, he’s buzzing, his vision blurring in and out. He feels the beginnings of a killer migraine -- that must be the strange feeling he’s been dealing with all day -- and pushes past the crowd of other kids in order to get back to his room. He just needs to sleep it off, close all the curtains, and maybe wallow in the dark for a bit. And if Daehyun’s there, he won’t mind. It’s all he ever does anymore, anyway.

Thinking about Daehyun makes something pinch in his chest, and at that moment his ears also pick up his name being mentioned by another boy, vowels curled around the name in laughter.

“Probably by now,” the boy is saying, “he’s just the Warden’s favorite pet. No wonder he’s never around anymore.”

Junhong pauses and turns, because he recognizes that voice: Jiho.

“What did you say?” Junhong begins angrily, surprising himself. He’s not sure why he’s getting involved; maybe it has something to do with Daehyun not being here in the flesh to defend himself.

Jiho looks at Kyung, then at Junhong, then back to Kyung, his eyebrows raised. Kyung shrugs. Jiho says, “I didn’t say anything to _you_.”

“Yeah, but what did you say about Daehyun?”

Blood pulses in Junhong’s temples, but he still steps forward, meeting Jiho’s growing grin with anger. He delights in riling people up.

Jiho straightens, pleased with himself, as the hallway they are in begins to clear. Other children have no interest in getting involved. “Just that he’s the Warden’s favorite. You probably know all about it. He probably gets special privileges. Fine dining. Movies. I bet he gets to leave the Facility.”

It’s so far from the truth that Junhong sees red spots in his field of vision. He clenches his fists tightly, willing the sudden bout of dizziness to go away.

“As long as he does what the Warden wants, I bet he gets all kinds of treats. _I_ could do that, but I guess the Warden has a certain kind of preference.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Junhong says evenly, even though his insides feel like a can of soda being shaken up. “You have no idea.”

“Bet he bends over for her,” Jiho says, suddenly nastier than before. “Like a little dog. We’re all dogs here, but he’s the best one, isn’t he?”

“Shut up,” Junhong grits through his teeth, feeling too much pressure on his scalp. His brain feels like it’s trying to escape through his ears. “Shut up!”

“The best dog. Plays fetch, rolls over--”

“No--”

“--speaks -- oh wait, not that one--”

“Shut up!”

A pop rings in Junhong’s ears, followed by silence. He opens his eyes because he hadn’t realized he’d closed them, and the first thing he sees is smoke.

Next: Kyung’s wide eyes and Jiho’s frozen stance. The smoke clears. Jiho’s head tips forward and a gush of blood drips from his nose.

“Shit!” Kyung exclaims, waving his hands. “Shit, you _flickered_. What the hell was that, man?!”

Junhong pales. He looks at his wrist, but his tag is still there, gleaming and silver. While they are busy trying to stop the flow of blood from Jiho’s nose, Junhong runs.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry everyone for the long wait ;;;;; thanks for your patience <3


	9. daehyun

They are looking for Bang Yongguk. They have the shape of his eyes in a file, his silhouette on a screen, but that is all. He is an elusive man, but that doesn’t matter to Daehyun. All that matters is that he ask, “Tell me what you know about Bang Yongguk,” as many times as they need him to ask. Always the same words, the same tone, the same vowels on his tongue.

Sometimes there is no reaction, because there is nothing to tell. The Warden calls this a ‘dud’ and reassigns the mutant sympathizer they've brought in to some Facility in another part of the country, far from here, and brings in another. Sometimes there is resistance, and this is worse, because this means Daehyun will pay attention.

This means he sees their faces, their looks of shock and horror as truth spills from their lips because of Daehyun’s voice, betrayal on their tongues. Yongguk is in the country. Yongguk has a support network of mutants and humans who hide him. Yongguk works alone. By the ends of these sessions, everyone is exhausted, but it is Daehyun who trembles in his seat, apologetic and scared, because the informant is only spitting angry. Sometimes they come after him, swinging their fists, but it’s okay. Daehyun deserves it.

Today’s mutant sympathizer is a reedy young man with eyes too large for his face, so Daehyun can’t tell if he is surprised or if he always looks this way. “Traitor,” the other man hisses as he’s forced into the seat across from Daehyun, who is strapped in himself. He used to resist, but has learned not to.

“Tell me what you know about Bang Yongguk,” Daehyun whispers, feeling the sharpness of his own words. He wonders what it is like to try to resist the _push_ , if it hurts or not, if Daehyun could resist it himself.

The Warden stands beside him, hand on his shoulder and manicured fingers laid delicately near his throat. A warning. “Good boy,” she says. “My good boy.”

.

He did well today. They reward him by allowing him to go back to the dorms with just a cloth mask and not the usual metal one he wears overnight. He leaves smelling like the Warden’s sweet perfume, a guard at his side with his hand on his elbow.

“Here we are,” the guard says once they’ve reached the door to his room. “Home sweet home.”

The door slides open, and Daehyun steps through. When it closes, the room remains dark, and the first thing Daehyun notices is the salt-smell of the air, like the sea. The second thing is Junhong, squashed into the corner where his bed meets the wall, his pale face like the moon. Daehyun turns the light on, and Junhong blinks like a cat. Alarm makes Daehyun’s nerves tingle. Junhong looks like a wreck, his lips red from biting them, his cheeks pale, a cold sweat breaking out across his brow.

He approaches immediately, holding his hand out and slowly touching the back of it to Junhong’s forehead, wrinkling his nose at the sweat he meets. Junhong’s skin is clammy. The younger boy must read Daehyun’s apprehension, because he says, “I thought you were a guard, coming to escort me out.”

Daehyun shakes his head, sitting down on the bed now.

Junhong shifts to make room, hugging his knees to his chest. He looks around the room suspiciously before leaning close to whisper conspiratorially, “I have to tell you what happened today, but you can’t -- you can’t _tell_ anyone, okay?”

Daehyun squints at him, resisting the urge to flick his roommate’s forehead with his index finger. The only person he ever really talks to is sitting right in front of him.

“Oh, right,” Junhong mumbles nervously, looking shame-faced. He plows on: “Something really weird happened. I felt weird all day. I thought it was a migraine, but -- but I don’t think it is. It was like a weird thing in the air, like I could feel a storm was coming. Do you ever feel like that? Something was crashing down, or about to crash down, over me. And I -- okay, get to the point, I know. What I’m trying to say is -- I think I almost teleported Jiho today.”

Daehyun can feel his blood in his ears, and it sounds like drums. What he's talking about is crazy. It's wonderful. Junhong looks at him, his lips a tight line. The older boy points at the tag around his wrist and raises his eyebrows in question.

Junhong raises his own wrist in response. “It hasn’t moved.”

 _Try it again_ , Daehyun wants to say, but even the thought of it makes him shudder. He leans across Junhong to grab the notepad and pen from the nightstand, scribbling it out instead. Junhong takes a second to read his chicken scratch, and then he says, “What if it was a fluke? What if it was Jiho? Or, what if it wasn’t a fluke, and Jiho reported me, and now they’re coming to take me out in the middle of the night, when no one is paying attention?”

Daehyun shakes his head, pointing at the notepad. _Try it again._

Inexplicably, Junhong takes his hand. Daehyun nearly startles, but reminds himself that it’s only Junhong, and squeezes his fingers lightly.

Then, Junhong stares at the notepad for a very long time. After a couple of seconds, he curses a little under his breath, and stares some more. Daehyun sighs; for some reason he had thought teleportation would involve a bit more hand-waving. Just when he’s about to pick up the pen to write this thought out, though, there is a crackle in the air, followed quickly by smoke. Even behind the mask, Daehyun coughs, fanning his free hand in front of his face.

His notepad is gone.

“I did it,” Junhong says in awe, his voice hushed. He points at the notepad that is now back on the nightstand. Daehyun narrows his eyes in suspicion. Junhong could have just moved it; it’s within arms’ reach. As though he can read Daehyun’s thoughts -- which by now, it might as well be Junhong’s second mutant power -- Junhong defends himself. “I didn’t pick it up and move it! I mean, I know sleight of hand stuff, but I didn’t do anything like that. Here, let me try again.”

It is much faster this time, and Daehyun watches his pen disappear from his grip and appear in Junhong’s hair. His eyes widen.

“I think,” Junhong says, making a book on the floor teleport onto Daehyun’s pillow on the bed, “that if it’s not _me_ , I can move it _with my brain_.” His giddiness is palpable. His eyes are all lit up, and his mouth smiles like the sun breaking over the horizon line. He moves another book from the table onto a chair, filling the air briefly with smoke.

Blood pounds in Daehyun’s ears. His grip on Junhong’s hand only tightens the longer he watches the phenomenon. Finally, Junhong complains that he’ll have to amputate his fingers if Daehyun keeps holding on like this, and they pause.

“What is it?” Junhong asks, giddiness melting away, because Daehyun looks apprehensive again. Apprehensive and hopeful. Junhong blinks and Daehyun feels the cloth mask disappear, the absence of it bringing a shock of cold against his skin. The piece of cloth, rumpled and small, reappears in Junhong’s lap.

Daehyun holds up his wrist. “What about this?” he asks, his voice thin and scratchy, as light glances off the silver tag.

.


	10. junhong

Daehyun’s face is smaller than Junhong remembers it, without the mask. In his mind, he’d lessened the fullness of his lips, the curve of his perpetual pout, to match his shrinking cheeks and glimmer in his eyes. Looking at his face, now, he thinks he never wants to see it covered ever again. The other boy presses his lips together, uncertain, his hands wavering, but Junhong catches one slender wrist with his fingers and brings his hyung’s hand into his lap.

The tag is hard, silver, and infinite, a continuous loop around the wrist, snug enough so that it doesn’t move past the forearm. Junhong holds Daehyun’s wrist in his lap and can feel the way his pulse is racing against the delicate bones near his joint, fluttering and as hopeful as the look in his eyes. “What about this,” Junhong repeats, more to himself than to Daehyun, considering the tag.

It gleams as he turns Daehyun’s hand slowly. Can he teleport something with such precision? He imagines trying and accidentally taking Daehyun’s hand with it, but quickly shakes his head to rid himself of the image. After all, he’d teleported the mask from Daehyun’s face. “Let me try it on me, first,” he says, finally, and Daehyun’s shoulders sag. He has the sudden urge to reach out and cup his cheeks, but he doesn’t. He lets go of Daehyun’s hand, pleased when Daehyun doesn’t remove it from his lap.

His own hands feel clammy, suddenly, and he runs his fingers through his hair to hide the jitters crawling all over him at the thought of being without the tag. He imagines how free he would feel -- free and capable and maybe even like a person again. Daehyun watches him, his gaze unwavering, and his laser focus gives Junhong the strength he needs to try.

He stares at his own tag. Over the past few weeks, he’d almost begun to ignore it, to feel like it was a part of himself. How could he ever have let himself get used to it? He wills it to go away, and when nothing seems to be happening, he wills it even harder. He envisions his wrist free of the metal collar, the skin underneath it pale and soft, a bit lighter than the skin around it. Gritting his teeth, he feels pressure build behind his eyes.

“Is it--” Daehyun starts to whisper, but then there’s a familiar pop, and smoke, and no stinging pain, and when the smoke clears Junhong sees nothing on his wrist.

The tag sits in his lap, the warm metal brushing against his skin. It’s off.

“Shit,” Junhong exhales, looking up to meet eyes with Daehyun, but Daehyun can’t look away from the tag, from Junhong’s exposed wrist. Junhong feels lighter than he’s felt in ages, since he got thrown into this damned place. A smiles cracks over his face, so big he’s worried he might split into two. A rush of euphoria overtakes him. He laughs, and then he teleports himself to the door and back, the familiar lightness of it making him giddy. He’s back to normal!

The bed creaks. “Junhong--” Daehyun begins to plead, his eyes huge and starting to water. He swallows whatever words had been at the base of his throat, holding out his wrist instead. “Junhong--”

Junhong blinks and the tag around Daehyun’s wrist disappears. He doesn’t know where he’s put it; it doesn’t matter to him at this moment. “Hyung, we’re free!”

Daehyun’s shock does nothing to dampen Junhong’s spirits. The younger boy gets up and walks around the room briskly, pausing at their small window, imagining the both of them out there beyond the border. Daehyun traces the skin around his wrist, lips parted. “I can’t believe this,” Daehyun says.

“Me neither,” Junhong exclaims, crashing back onto the bed. He holds his arms out, grinning to himself when Daehyun shifts forward to share the hug.

“Aren’t you gonna leave?” Daehyun asks him, his voice small and unsure. “You could--”

“Not without you,” Junhong says. “And the last time I tried to teleport _someone else_ even a little bit, they got a bloody nose.” Daehyun presses himself closer.

His heart jams against his ribs then at an ear piercing siren, a high-pitched alarm that seems to come from everywhere -- the ceilings, the floors, the tag. “This is not a drill,” says a voice over the loudspeakers. “We are entering lock-down. I repeat, this is a lock-down. All students must report to their rooms.”

“It’s the tag,” Daehyun says into his chest. His entire form shakes, and Junhong holds him tighter. “They know; they’re coming for us. You could save yourself. You could get out.”

“No,” Junhong says, not really surprising himself. “We’re getting out together.”

The alarm continues to blare. Daehyun extracts himself from Junhong’s hold, sitting back on his heels. His eyes are shining full of something Junhong wants to believe in. “I could make you go,” he says.

Fear grips Junhong’s heart at the thought, and then shame for feeling afraid. “Don’t you dare,” he says instead, taking Daehyun’s shoulders in his hands. “We’ll figure out a way, together. I’m not leaving you here.”

“It wouldn’t be your fault,” Daehyun responds, shaking his head. He looks miserable. “But you don’t belong here, Junhong. You never did.”

“You don’t belong here, _either_ , Daehyun,” Junhong insists. “None of us do.”

The shine in Daehyun’s eyes manifests into tears. Junhong watches them roll down his cheeks and drip into the collar of his coverall. “Junhong, thank you for everything. Really. You’ve been the only good thing about this place.”

“No!” Junhong covers his ears, hoping that the barrier in addition to the blaring alarm will be enough for Daehyun’s voice not to sway him, but even before Daehyun can get the words out of his mouth, he can feel some inexplicable pull in his bones.

 _Junhong_ , he knows Daehyun is saying, _get--_

Daehyun doesn’t finish his sentence. At that moment, the door opens and two guards charge in, overtaking the boys in an instant. Junhong, struggling with his own guard attempting to wrangle him to the ground, watches one guard bring Daehyun down to the floor, knee pressed into Daehyun’s chest, a huge hand clamped over his mouth as he brings a gag out from his pocket. He thinks this one had come specifically for Daehyun, because he’s wearing earplugs.

A rage he has never felt before surges up inside of him like a tidal wave, making his blood feel electric. With a loud yell, he throws himself away from his guard, bringing up his fists, and disappears in a cloud of smoke.

.


	11. daehyun

Daehyun clamps his teeth down on the hand of the guard on top of him, satisfied with the way it makes the larger man grunt. The satisfaction doesn’t stay for long, though, as a sharp pain erupts over the side of his face, his skin white-hot, and with some shock he realizes the guard has backhanded him. Fingers dig into his cheeks and around his neck as the guard tries to put something over his face, the older man’s knee digging painfully into his chest until it feels like he’s going to pop like a bubble.

“Stop, please,” he cries, his voice raspy, unable to withstand the pressure. “Get off!”

The man’s weight abruptly disappears, and Daehyun puts his hands in front of his face in preparation, but no following attack comes. The sirens still blare, the automated message playing over the loudspeakers. Above him, the guard blinks in confusion, a glaze over his eyes.

“G-get out!” Daehyun says uncertainly, just when he hears a _pop!_ in Junhong’s direction, and sulfur from the smoke associated with his teleportation fills the air. He looks over, and Junhong is gone. A feeling like he’s being dropped from a balcony overtakes him: Junhong has left him. “Get out!” he says again, this time with more force, and the guard immediately turns and stalks toward their door.

“Dude! Sung!” the guard who had been wrestling with Junhong calls out, but before he can make any move toward his colleague, the air crackles with electricity and Junhong reappears above him, his figure seemingly huge as he plummets into the guard with his fist, catching him neatly at the temple. The guard crumples to the ground before Junhong touches down.

“Come on,” Junhong ushers, moving so quickly he might have teleported again, helping Daehyun stand on his feet. “Let’s go!”

“What?” Daehyun feels lightheaded, stumbling. The noise from the sirens aggravates the throbbing on the side of his face.

“We’re getting out of here,” Junhong says. “Together.”

.

The hallway is awash in red, then white, then red again as the emergency lights pulse in time to the sirens. It seems a little too much noise just for two young mutants who have managed to remove their tags. Through a crack in their door, Junhong watches a small herd of guards stride past. He waits until they are halfway down the hall before taking Daehyun’s wrist because his fingers are too limp to hold and dragging the older boy out of their room in the opposite direction, toward the elevator.

Daehyun hesitates, his reluctance giving Junhong pause. “Stairs,” Daehyun manages to say, careful not to _push_. Junhong waits and gives him time to explain. “They control the elevators. They’re not going to work for us.”

All of the room doors are closed, locked from the outside after the guards on duty checked that mutants were in their rooms, and the resulting stillness is an eerie but stark contrast to the noise and flashing lights throughout the building. They wait in the doorway of the room next to theirs, huddled in front of the locked door, until the guards have left their hall.

“The only way out is the front gate,” Junhong says when they are the only ones left on the floor. “That, or the roof.”

Daehyun starts when Junhong’s hand rests over the crest of his hipbone, but he thinks fear has little to do with the reaction. He says, “Shame neither of us can fly.”

.

Halfway down the flight of stairs they hear rapid footsteps approaching from below and freeze, squeezing themselves against the wall.

They hear the voice of a guard echo in the stairwell. “You think he’s alone?”

By now, the sirens have stopped, even though they still ring in Daehyun’s ears, but the emergency lights keep flashing.

Another voice answers, “Who knows? You’d think we were being attacked by an army, though. Warden’s gone all out.”

“I don’t get paid enough for this,” the first speaker says. Then more footsteps, and Junhong and Daehyun glance at each, holding their breaths, afraid to move or to make any sound. Should they go up? The nearest landing is the fourth floor, and there’s a chance the guards won’t even realize it’s kids that are creeping about, and not other Facility staff.

They exhale when they hear a door below them creak open, and the mumbling guards leave the stairwell.

“Do you think they’re talking about us?” Junhong asks Daehyun, wary of how his voice carries in the column.

“I don’t know. They should know we’re not alone, right?”

Junhong takes Daehyun’s hand again, squeezing in reassurance. It makes his skin warm in a way that reminds him of the beach back when he was a kid, laying out in the sand or tumbling into the water. “Let’s keep going,” he says, leading them down.

.

On the second floor landing, the door opens to a whole team of guards in helmets and body armor, weapons that look very much like real guns in their hands and belts.

On instinct, Daehyun and Junhong bolt in the opposite direction: up.

The guards thunder behind them as they take the steps as quickly as possible, up and up and up, Daehyun’s heart hammering in his chest and adrenaline pumping his legs, his only thought is to _get away_ , and he yelps when the wall by his head suddenly explodes with sound. “Stay still!” one of the guards roars. Daehyun sees the dart that had been shot at the wall fall to the ground, its needled tip glistening.

“Tranqs!” he yells up to Junhong, who stumbles on the steps. Daehyun takes his arm and hauls him up. They have to keep going. More darts ricochet off the walls. He thanks the shoddy Facility training system for never really building up their skills with firearms.

“--stuck here when the big game is outside--” one of the guards chasing them is panting. “Stupid mutie kids.”

Daehyun throws his shoulder against the door to the ninth floor but meets an immovable wall instead. He grits his teeth against the flare of pain that shoots up his arm.

“Locked,” the guard says behind them, closing distance. “They all are now.”

“Junhong--”

“No,” Junhong says firmly, continuing to stride up. “I’m not leaving without you.”

“I could tell them to stop--”

Daehyun trips up a step, landing awkwardly on one wrist. And then fire is shooting up his leg, followed by a sudden, numbing cold. Junhong bends down to pluck the dart from his thigh, but the damage is done. With a groan, the taller boy drags Daehyun up and holds him close against his side, bearing most of his weight. “We’re almost at the top.”

“--and then what,” Daehyun pants. He thinks he’s speaking, but he can’t be sure. His lips aren’t moving properly, and everything feels heavy and slow like molasses. Junhong brings them up the steps, breathing hard, and keeps going.

“And then what,” Daehyun mumbles again, feeling his eyelids droop. The cold has seeped into his fingertips, making his limbs useless. Junhong seems to prop him against the wall, and then a series of loud bangs travels to his ears like they are underwater.

“If I could just get this open to the roof--”

The guards close in. Daehyun sees them on the landing just below theirs. Four of them for two boys. “You could get out,” he thinks he says, but he can’t be sure if any words came out right. His head feels too heavy for his shoulders, but he tries his hardest to stay upright.

“Can’t go anywhere, boys,” one of the guards says. He’s holding up his gun. “Just come with us, put your tags back on, and we’ll talk to the Warden about going easy on you.”

Something rattles behind him. Junhong curses, having pushed repeatedly against the door to the roof with no success. Daehyun thinks of Junhong in the Box, of Junhong with the Warden’s nails raking across his cheek, and feels a well of emotion bubble up and out of him. He can’t let them get their hands on Junhong again. “You could go,” he says again, but Junhong doesn’t seem to hear.

He is propped up again, large hands on his shoulders, Junhong’s face swimming in his vision. “You can’t go back with them,” Junhong says. “It’ll kill you.”

Daehyun only nods, the words becoming jumbled in his brain. He wants to sleep for a very long time.

“Just come with us,” another guard says.

“I’ve never done this before,” Junhong says next, crushing him against his chest. He smells spicy and slightly ripe, comforting and bare. “I don’t know if this will work.”

Daehyun closes his eyes. “Do it,” he whispers, unsure what he is encouraging.

Junhong says, “Okay,” and the next thing Daehyun feels is a sucking sensation starting from his belly button, then a feeling like he is being wrung out, twisted up like a towel and shaken. He smells sulfur and smoke and sees a flash of something great and awful, and then--

He gags and doubles over onto the floor, which is now surprisingly concrete, his head spinning with vertigo. When the nausea subsides, he finds he is also no longer feeling the numbing effects of the tranquilizer.

“It worked,” Junhong says, in awe of himself. “You’re not, like, missing any body parts, are you?”

He feels himself being checked over, and he waves Junhong off, feeling another bout of nausea wash over him. “What happened?” he manages to choke out.

“I teleported!” Junhong explains. “I teleported us _both_ out. We’re out. Gosh, I’m tired, though.”

Daehyun finally sits up and takes stock of their surroundings. It seems to be some sort of warehouse, with a concrete floor and high, skeletal ceilings, and stacks of boxes in rows.

“I ran away a few times here,” Junhong admits, when he sees Daehyun’s confusion. “When I teleport, it’s easier if I know where I’m going, and I’ve been here so many times--”

“We’re outside,” Daehyun interrupts, his voice high and thin. Tears jump into his eyes. He doesn’t know what he expected to feel, but right now it is just relief. “ _Junhong_.”

“Wow! Within five minutes!”

The new voice makes them both jump, eyes darting to its source. A young man rounds the corner of a stack of boxes, dressed smartly in a trim leather jacket and dark jeans. His face is sharp and handsome, but he reminds Daehyun of a leopard. Dangerous and beautiful. Another boy follows him, his face rounder but his shoulders broader, dressed similarly.

“I had a good feeling about this one,” the shorter boy says, grinning as they approach. Daehyun and Junhong press themselves so close to each other that Daehyun can feel Junhong’s heart beating through his chest.

“Your precognition just keeps getting better and better.”

“That thing with Bbang helped,” the shorter boy says. “It’s always easier when there’s a catalyst.”

“Who are you?” Junhong demands. “How did you find us?”

“I’m Himchan,” the taller man says, pointing to himself, “and this is Youngjae. We’re teachers.”

Daehyun takes in their leather and denim and raises his eyebrows.

Himchan shrugs. “Studying to be teachers, truthfully. Tutors might be a better descriptor. Advocates for mutant learning? Anyway, we came to collect you.”

Junhong twitches, his arms coming around Daehyun protectively.

Youngjae gives Himchan a shove. “You’re scaring them! Listen, we’re students at the Park Day and Boarding School. Have you heard of it?”

Daehyun hasn’t, but Junhong makes a hesitant noise of agreement. “You were on the news,” he says. “I saw your principal make a speech.”

Youngjae nods, smiling gently. “We’re part of a team who looks for other mutant kids who might want to join our school, whether if it’s for the amazing education or for the sense of community or for -- safety. We’re here to help.”

“Safety?” Daehyun repeats, hopeful and desperate. Junhong’s arms around him are strong and steady.

Youngjae nods again. “We won’t make you come with us or enroll, but we want to invite you to visit the school, meet with the principal, meet some other kids. It’s a very different place from where you were, and...even if you don’t want to stay, we can help you figure out what to do next.”

“And the food’s great,” Himchan adds with a wink. “So at least come for a nice meal.”

Daehyun looks back at Junhong, no longer surprised when he finds him closer than expected. Junhong gazes back, his eyes hard and resigned but still glimmering with anticipation. “As long as we can go together,” he says.

“Of course,” Youngjae answers, holding out his hand. They had gotten close enough so that when Daehyun reaches out to take it, Youngjae can pull him from the floor. Junhong rises behind him, brushing dust from his coveralls. Himchan and Youngjae lead the two young mutants outside of the warehouse, where a car is waiting for them, sleek and black and shiny.

Daehyun looks up, taking in the vastness above him. It is the same sun, but it seems so much brighter.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking this through <3

**Author's Note:**

> [writing](andnowforyaya.tumblr.com) || [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya)
> 
> also this was like the first au that i ever chatficced with fade ever so there's that. thanks fade. i love you.


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